Nimueh's Bane
by CelestialHeavens1
Summary: Despite what everyone assumed, Nimueh did not grow up evil. She had a mother and father and two younger brothers whom she loved very much and loved putting the tiny frogs in their hair.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: An idea that came to me while watching _Merlin _and wouldn't let me go. Because Nimueh, for all the bad she did, didn't seem like she was super evil. She seemed like she was in horrible pain and reminded me more of Kilgharrah when he attacked Camelot.

* * *

Despite what everyone assumed, Nimueh did not grow up evil. In the days of her childhood, she had been Ninane, and she had been happy. She had a mother and father and two younger brothers whom she loved very much and loved putting tiny frogs in their hair.

Her father was a powerful sorcerer and a dragonlord. Her brothers, Balinor and Balan, both had magic in their own right, even before their father died and passed the dragonlord's gift to Balinor.

She grew up in Camelot, where magic was free as long as the de Bois line sat on the throne. As a nobleman's daughter, she befriended the Lady Vivienne and the princess Ygraine and had a desperate crush on the crown prince Tristan.

Everything changed when she was called to be a High Priestess. She mastered her Seeing. She learned from the High Priestess whose place she took how to become the Master of the Cup of Life. Her magic was powerful, and her sisters all smiled and said there wouldn't be another as powerful as her for many years, not until Magic was taken from the land and born into flesh. She had thought it had been one of those prophecies that took centuries to occur. She was wrong.

She was on the Isle of the Blessed when she received word that her father was dead in battle and that a man had killed the old king and taken control of the throne of Camelot. She had cried until the rains came down, the Triple Goddess crying with her.

But Balinor and Balan were safe. The Great Dragon Kilgharrah ensured it.

She received word from Ygraine next. Tristan and Agravaine lived, but both were banished from Camelot proper. They were given estates and sent away from the court because the Usurper had traded their lives for Ygraine's hand in marriage. For her brothers' sakes, she agreed. Ninane mourned for her friends and their loss.

The Usurper called her to court not long after. The other High Priestesses thought it wise to play nice with the king since any child of his by Ygraine would still carry the de Bois blood.

Upon arriving in court, Nimueh, the name she was now known by, was surprised to see her brothers as noblemen still. Balinor vouched for the king and Vivienne held her hands as they watched Ygraine marry the man who had murdered their fathers.

Vivienne had nightmares. She always had nightmares. She had magic, dormant as it may have been. Only then, her dreams started coming true. She claimed the end was near for most there.

Vivienne's pregnancy ended in Gaius, one of the healer adepts who studied on the Isle, smuggling the child to the Isle to be safe. Vivienne could sense her baby's magic, as could the other High Priestesses. She feared that Uther, in his lust for power, would bring her to court and force her to serve.

It was to an unreasonable fear. Balan had expressed the same multiple times. The Usurper drew magic users to him like horses to water and flies to honey.

And then Vivienne was pregnant again, sobbing that the child was not her husband's, that the Usurper had come to her bed and she had been unable to refuse. Oh, Uther said that they were both lonely. He made her sound just as at fault as him. She begged Nimueh to help her, to do something. She hated that she could do nothing to help her friend.

The Usurper came to her next. He asked her to give him an heir by Ygraine. Nimueh told him she couldn't. It was a perversion of life and death. To bring a new life into the world with magic, the goddess would demand one be taken.

He didn't listen. He told her to do it anyways.

Nine months later, Arthur Pendragon was born. Nimueh was at Ygraine side, as was the customs for the High Priestess to bless the de Bois heirs.

But then Ygraine started to fade, and not even her magic could save her friend.

"Please!" she had begged the goddess, "Take me instead!"

Instead, the goddess told her that she would only meet her death at Emrys' hand and she was recalled to the Isle indefinitely, Uther banishing her from the court on pain of her death.

For her failure, the Usurper declared magic illegal on punishment of death. Tristan came to seek revenge against Uther for killing his sister and was slain by the same sword that had murdered his father.

For her failure, Uther killed Balan before the court, burned like the other magic users on a stake in the middle of the courtyard. She heard his cries in her sleep, even though she was over a days ride away.

For her failure, Uther had used Balinor to help slaughter his kin, only to turn on her brother and imprison him and Kilgharrah.

She cried in relief when she heard Balinor had escaped. She felt horrible that she could not go to him, could not help her kin, but her punishment for meddling in life and death was to be bound to the Isle for twenty years. Until Magic set foot in Camelot.

Nimueh laughed and cried at the cruelness of it all and swore that the minute she was free, she would have her revenge for the deaths of her friends and her family.


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Nimueh saw Merlin, it was through a scrying bowl, and she mistook him as a peasant and a servant. In his presence, she could feel his power but mistook him as a common sorcerer who was so, so stupid coming to Camelot and protecting a Pendragon (_protecting Ygraine's child_).

It wasn't until later when she saw Arthur Pendragon leave the cave that she understood.

Merlin was Emrys.

Merlin was Magic.

How clever of a disguise he wore. It fooled even him.

She felt like an idiot. Merlin- no, Magic had set foot in Camelot, and she had been freed.

She raised her beloved Tristan from the grave and asked him to kill the Usurper, but Merlin forged a sword with magic that Uther wielded. (_And wasn't the upstart king just a bloody hypocrite._) She knew Tristan would never have peace until Uther was dead.

She had not dared challenge him again, not since she'd poisoned him, not since before she knew who exactly Merlin was. That would not last. Not once he begged her for her help saving Arthur.

Begged the way she had to the goddess to save Ygraine. Balan. Tristan. Vivienne. Her mother and father. Her king, Ygraine's father.

The goddess hadn't helped Nimueh, but Nimueh could help Merlin.

It wasn't until Gaius (_He looked so ancient. How had he become so ancient?_) appeared that she realized that the balance had been Gaius' sister.

And then Merlin showed up on the Isle, and he had such righteous anger that she saw he was just a boy. He could not harm her. And when she had hit him with a fireball, he crumpled.

It wasn't until he stood back up that she saw someone reflected in him that she hadn't seen in twenty years that she understood that today was the day she died. She had seen that expression on another man's face once, so long ago. (_She had last seen that expression on Balinor's face._)

Then Magic called down lightning, and she was gone.

...

...

...

Still, it had been an honor to die by Magic's own hand.


End file.
